Step up
A sign at the Franklin Institute food court, “Please, step up and help yourself,” turned into a reminder to me that your days should be what you want and only you can change them.
All posts tagged: work
Sometimes I tag very loosely or obscurely so the link might not be obvious.
Article
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Cover Letter
A rant with one useful tip for job hunters: skip the résumé spam and write a real cover letter to the human who will read it.
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Perpetually getting organized
I’ve been trying to get organized since high school, and my habit of letting the best destroy the good keeps turning a simple GTD system into an elaborate software project.
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The importance of icebergs
Reading Joel Spolsky’s Iceberg Secret convinces me that the user interface is the most important thing in software, and that demos should look as unfinished as they are.
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Soffit Vents
I spent a holiday weekend installing continuous soffit vents under my eaves with a $45 circular saw, plugging a previous owner’s 24 stray holes, and worrying whether the vinyl caps let enough air through.
Note
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asking questions in email
How the heck do you get someone to answer more than one question in an email? I have read lots of email ettiquite articles, and I pride myself on concise emails that tell you something simple, ask a question or two or delegate some sort of action. But very often I send an email with 2 or 3 questions, because I need to know something like: 1. Have you handled xyz? 2. If yes, something specific about the handling?
And the response I will get is. “Yep I handled it.” or “Yes” or in a very special instance I have gotten my own emails forwarded to me with the simple line “FYI” :-/
Of course while the last example above is true, it is not central to my question here. How do you get someone to not just selectively answer one of your questions, in my experience it is either the first question or the last question. Or they respond to your initial setup of the context of the email.
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home field advantage
I was going to write some complicated assessment of How, so far, I really like working from home rather than trekking 40+ miles to work. But the essence is really captured here.
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Still First
When your already long commute gets doubled by bad traffic to 2 hours, it can be frustrating. But it is also odd to note that you are still the first person in the office.
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I, Open Source Developer
According to our press release on Tuesday, CentraView, the contact management, calendar, opportunity tracking J2EE application which is not only used for running a business, but also used for feeding me and my family is going to be open source on November 16th. So once it is available download it, check it out and convince your employer to buy it.
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truancy:n. pl. truancies The act or condition of being absent without permission.
Madden 2005 is due out soon. Pick a reason.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
I’ve noticed this Lorem Ipsum quote on a number of developing web pages or interfaces. And sometimes wondered what it was, and what it meant. Well I finally asked google, and found lipsum.com with the explanation, a translation, and a generator.
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Focus and Warp offs
I just read an excellent article related to an entry I recently made, which was followed up by Mike here.
I tend to agree with the viewpoint that it takes 3 hours of individual concentration to get anything done (in general). Although I, and my work, have benefitted significantly from interactive like work as Mike suggests, I think the 3 hours of uninterrupted focus suggested in the article, are a great way to get things done, as long as you can avoid what he calls “warp-offs.” Which is my key obstacle to overcome. I think I am going to make a concerted effort to catch myself right before I do this, and take that energy and re-apply it to my work. I may even keep a log for a few days so I can find what is usually the trigger of the warp-offs. I guess this means no gaim, no irc, and no email.
Apparently before I got a chance to flesh out this entry, Slashdot got a hold of it and now the site is running a little slow. But I swear I saw it first, on someone elses blog. :-)
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Focus
I find that my focus is sometimes really strong, and then for apparently no reason it diverges to nothing, and suddenly I am writing a senseless entry on this site. I am really into the work I am doing, but then out of nowhere I can’t focus and start looking around for things to do.
I think just stronger mental discipline will cure it, just force myself back to work and I will cause my interest to peak again, as soon as I see a neat problem or situation that I need to solve.
Diving back in!